Contents will be available easily to consumers as digital technology and media processing power become more and more advanced. Not like analogue media, digital media almost has unlimited number of copies with good quality. Thus as content owner, or content operator they will have much concern about the dangerous if content is not protected well.
Digital TV (DTV) broadcasting has been widely deployed in the world. So far there is not much concern about the content protection and security. However as new generation DTV-STB (Set-Top-Box) that has local hard disk and digital interface like IEEE 1394, etc. is launched, content association, movie industries, and media owners are starting to worry about the content protection and copy management. Before having a complete and very secured DTV-STB, a secured content delivery and transferring mechanism, as well as a secured transmission channel, they would not allow to release contents to such applications. Therefore many parties in the world including standard bodies like MPEG, DVB, TVAnytime, content companies, CE (Consumer Electronics) manufacturers, as well as security technology providers, etc., are gathering together to work on a both interoperable and secure end-to-end solution to the content protection and copy management in such application scenario.
Content distribution and video-on-demand is also becoming more and more demanding as multimedia data and contents can reach to anywhere and anytime. User is happy with the convenience and flexibility, and they can enjoy entertainment easily and efficiently.
On the other hand, content owners are trying to meet the customer's needs but at the same time they also worry about the illegal usage of their property. There is a balance between two sides.
In MPEG standardisation group, people are working towards to standardise an IPMP (Intellectual Property Management and Protection) system that involves compliant terminal. All the terminals can play back a protected content that is encrypted and protected by following the same IPMP standard, no matter what kinds of IPMP tools they use.
DVB consortium has also issued Call for Proposal for CPCM (Content Protection and Copy Management), to mainly focus on content delivery from operator to receiver and content transferring from one DVB-CPCM device to another in a both secure and interoperable manner.
The current DVB receiver as a DVB device cannot fulfil the both secure and interoperable requirement, especially for content transferring between DVB receiver and other storage devices like PVR, etc., which has not addressed before.
Basically the prior art for an existing DVB receiver is shown in FIG. 1, to indicate how a content is delivered to DVB receiver in a secure but private way.
Related invention is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Nos. 2001-265908 and 2001-058236 which are filed by the present applicant.
To design an interoperable and secure device to be used in content delivery or transmission in a secure manner;
To design an interoperable and secure device to be used in content transferring between such devices in a secure manner;
In the above-mentioned cases, content is protected against illegal use of the property and granted usage is properly managed and carried from one device to another within authorised domain.